Coming Down
by jacklavigne
Summary: 'you abuse the ones who love you, you abuse the ones who won't, if you ever had a real heart, I don't think you'd know where to start..'


_Authors Note: This is a smallish one shot that I wrote, to help me deal with season three and the state that it left me in. I wrote it in the small amount of time I had over the weekend after finishing the new season and haven't much edited this, so apologies for any mistakes, etc. The song is Coming Down by the Dum Dum Girls and does not belong to me. (It's the song at the end of the third episode of season three, when they're taking Nicky to MAX, Nicky who was my favourite of all characters and an episode that I related to and completely destroyed me.) – Longer Author Note at the bottom._

 **Coming Down**

 _I take as much as I can get_

 _I don't have any regret_

 _I close my eyes to conjure up something_

 _But it's just a faint taste in my mouth_

 _You abuse the ones who love you_

 _You abuse the ones who won't_

 _If you ever had a real heart_

 _I don't think you'd know where to start_

 _And I think I'm coming down…_

 _Home sweet home,_ you think to yourself as you rest your head back against the cement wall, tapping your fingertips against your knee in a rhythm from a barely remembered song. _This is where I truly belong._

You don't know how you got here; well, you know how you got _here,_ but you don't know when exactly you began to stray from your naturally WASPy path. You started your fifteen month sentence as a woman who wasn't quite innocent, but not exactly guilty either. You were arrested for a crime that you committed ten years ago, a crime that you committed for your girlfriend that you loved, young and stupid as you were. You started off your sentence with an overwhelming sense of naivety, planning to just do your time and hopefully get _ripped,_ before returning to your loving fiancé and continuing your boring yuppy life.

When did you stray from your path? Was it when you saw Alex again after eight years, remembering the thrill of your old life that you shared? Was it when you beat Doggett's face into the snow on Christmas Eve? Was it when you lied on the stand to save the woman you loved from her ruthless ex-king pin? Was it when you had Polly call Alex's parole officer to get her thrown back in prison? Or was it when you started the godforsaken panty business?

You're not sure, you don't know if you'll ever be sure when things began to change; when _you_ began to change, becoming this heartless, cold woman, so different from the naïve but well intentioned WASP you once were.

You think back, in attempt to pin point the moment that has now damned you to this six by four prison cell. This room where you first truly saw your real self for the first time.

/

 _Six months earlier.._

You sat in your prison bunk, sorting through your mail, barely even looking up as they dragged Stella past your cell, shoulders slumped with defeat. You catch a glimpse of her dark hair and her colourful tattoos before she's removed from the dorm, the prison and you don't even feel a twinge of sympathy or guilt as she disappears from your life. You remember briefly the overwhelming guilt that you felt upon getting Doggett locked up in psych, crazy as she was then, and the heart wrenching sadness and complete sense of unfairness you felt upon seeing Nicky dragged off to Max, but you feel nothing now.

You've accepted this side of yourself, the manipulative cunt, and you only wish that Stella had followed her own advice, the words that she tattooed into your arm: _Trust No Bitch._

She had been a decent business partner, an attractive face with ridiculously soft lips, and you had _liked_ her, before she betrayed you. She had been no different from any other woman in this prison, a criminal that was only interested in helping herself, despite her pleas for forgiveness and promises of repayment. You don't feel any urge to read the letter that she wrote you, tucked away in your khaki shirt pocket, feel no remorse over ruining the next five years of her life that she'll spend locked up in Max.

You are so very good at ruining lives after all, Larry's life, Alex's life, your own; it's what you do and you accept that too.

You have to embrace it, the darkness that's been lurking beneath your skin since you self-surrendered to this place. There's no point in lying anymore, no point in trying to make everyone happy when all you get is shit for it. You need to accept yourself as everyone sees you, as the woman you've always been, the one you've been hiding from: the self-absorbed, narcissistic bitch.

Only now you're a self-absorbed, narcissistic bitch that people are afraid of and you kind of like how that feels.

You've never felt this kind of power before and you can see how people get addicted to it so easily. You feel as if you have the world in your hands and the people in it are just ants, ants that you can crush beneath your fingers. You can understand now why Alex never wanted to give up the cartel, when she had this kind of power at her fingertips, except in the outside world.

The panty business had just started out as a plan to get a bit of money to help when you finally left prison, a bit of fun to shake up the days you spent locked away, but now it was so much more. You wonder what you could turn this into, wonder if you could still continue things once you've left Litchfield…

Your thoughts are interrupted by the sound of the alarm and you sigh as you slip of the edge of your brand new mattress, lying down on the floor with the rest of the few inmates in A Dorm. You cross your arms in front of your face as you lie on the cool ground, catching a glimpse of the tattoo that is written neatly upon your forearm, standing out against your red, irritated skin like a scar, a reminder.

 _Trust No Bitch._

You smirk to yourself as you stare at it, oblivious to the women being escorted from the lake outside or your dark haired ex-lover who lies in a pool of her own blood on the green house floor.

/

There's no dinner that night, since most of the women who work in the kitchen were sent to their dorms for leaving the prison grounds. There isn't enough room in SHU to punish anyone too severely, but everyone who was caught down at the lake was given a SHOT and a severe warning that the next step they took out of line would send them straight to MAX. You're making noodles in your cube, silently listening to the gossip that is spreading through the dorm about the new influx of prisoners, which explains the new bunk beds they've installed, when you hear the mention of her name.

You catch snippets of Alex's name in half heard, hushed sentences, catch people watching you worriedly from the corner of your eye as you pour flavouring into your Ramen noodles. It's not until you catch Morello's gaze, dark eyes wide and full of unshed tears, that the first stab of worry and fear threatens to tear your heart apart. You begin to listen to the rumours that are spreading and you feel as if the room is spinning from the things that you hear from the other inmates.

You instantly begin searching for Lolly, the crazy inmate that Alex had been so paranoid about, who's sitting in her bunk, writing furiously in a black notebook. Her eyes widen when she sees you standing outside her cube and she hurriedly closes her book and jams it underneath her prison issued pillow.

"Chapman," she says nervously, her wide blue eyes darting all over the room as you advance on her. "What's going on?"

You grip her khaki shirt in her hands and almost lift her from the bed, barely noticing the sudden quiet that surrounds you as you shake her. "Where the fuck is Alex? What have you done to her?"

It's the only thing that made sense; that Lolly had finally given up her charade of being simply crazy and had attacked Alex, since you heard in the whispers that that was exactly what had happened.

 _Alex had been hurt. That girl with the glasses had been shanked or something in the greenhouse. Vause's face had been used as someone's personal punching bag. Alex Vause was dead, dead, dead._

"I didn't do anything!" Lolly cried immediately, her thin hands gripping your wrists. "I didn't touch her! We were working together! NSA must have found out that she was double crossing them!"

You're confused and even more worried than before, your hands shaking with more than just strain from holding the other inmate up from her bunk. "What the fuck are you talking about?"

"She was working for the CIA, man!" Lolly replied in a hushed whisper, her eyes darting worriedly around the dorm. "But the NSA sent one of their men in here to take her out! They caught her alone in the greenhouse and Alex must have put up a fight, 'cause they were both dead when they found 'em!"

Lolly's entire body is trembling now and you think she must be afraid of you. It's not until you realise that it's your own hands that are shaking so terribly, causing her entire body to tremor, that you finally let the woman slump back onto the bed.

Alex. _Alex, Alex, Alex, Alex._

Dead? Alex is dead? No.

"No," you finally manage to gasp, running your trembling fingers through your hair as you begin to shake your head. "No. Fuck, no. Alex isn't dead. She's not dead. I saved her. I fucking saved her. She's safe here."

You're on the verge of a full blown melt down, with Lolly sliding as far away in her bunk away from you as she can get, when Lorna hesitantly enters the cube. She's crying and she has her hands out in front of her as if to protect herself from a rabid dog and her lips are moving but you can't hear what she's saying.

"Alex," you whisper, feeling a lump beginning to form in your throat, threatening to suffocate you. "No. Nononononono _no_."

"Chapman," Lorna is saying, her voice shaky as she gives you a pleading stare. "Piper, calm down. It's okay."

"She's dead," you say, gripping your blonde hair in your hands, pulling hard, hard like Alex once pulled when she fucked you in the library. "She's fucking dead. No!"

"No." Morello's words finally get through to you as she shakes her head profusely. "No, Chapman, she's not. Alex was still movin' when they wheeled her out of here. There was a lot of blood, but… Doggett looked worse on Christmas Eve. I'm sure she'll be fine, y'know?"

She somehow manages to lead you back to your bunk, practically carrying you since you're such a wrecked, trembling mess, and you can't forget how empty your life felt for those few minutes, when you thought that Alex Vause no longer existed in it.

/

A month of your life passes behind bars and everything turns back to a semblance of normality, though Alex doesn't return. You never truly find out what happened in that greenhouse, only that Alex was attacked by a guard, but that Alex put up a fight and both of them ended up being rushed to hospital in critical condition. You never find out how badly Alex was hurt, or if she lived and it breaks something inside of you.

Damages you in a way that's beyond repair, causing hard scar tissue to form around what's left of your heart, blocking everything else out.

You continue with your business, recruiting new members, binding yourself closer to Red than you had ever thought possible. She seems to appreciate this new you, maybe seeing a bit of herself in the reflection of the cold, hard armour that you now wear, but you don't trust her, no matter how helpful she is.

 _Trust No Bitch,_ you repeat the words like a mantra, keeping everyone in the prison at arm's length.

The money is rolling in, filling up your commissary and those of your business partners, until half the women in the prison have joined your crew. You bury yourself in the work, no longer finding so much joy in the power of it, but continuing because what else can you do? Your reputation after getting Stella sent to MAX dropped considerably after everyone saw you break down upon hearing that Alex had been attacked and now you were trying to build yourself back up.

It was a slow progress, which sped up considerably when Flaca, who you had decided to promote despite everything, punched a woman in the face at your order when the other inmate started talking about starting up her own business. Everyone steered clear of you after that, except for the few people in your inner circle, who had to conduct business with you on a daily basis.

It's almost two months after Alex was rushed off to hospital when she finally returns and it's more shocking than anything.

She somehow finds you before the whispers of her return manage to reach your ears, sitting alone in your bunk reading a vague and strange letter from Cal, concerning your business. It seems as if you've received several offers to join up with other panty organisations and you're considering your reply when you look up to find her standing outside your bunk.

She's once again wearing those awful bright orange khakis, which only make the scars on her face that much more noticeable. Considering the damage that she must have suffered to be kept in the hospital for so long, she doesn't look half as bad as you had expected. There is a jagged pink, still healing scar that cuts through her otherwise still perfect left eyebrow, a thin white scar above her upper lip and a long scar that runs along the edge of her hairline. You know immediately why there would have been so much blood, since head injuries tend to bleed profusely, but this image of her is much better than the ones that have been haunting your nightmares.

Her beautiful face mangled and ruined beyond recognition. Her pale body slumped upon the greenhouse floor, lifeless with her green eyes staring, staring, staring.

You're so relieved to see her, to see her whole and breathing, that a chink appears in your armour, so small that you don't even notice.

Alex was always the only one who was able to crawl underneath your skin, even when you didn't want her to.

You're caught in between standing up and embracing her and falling to the floor at her feet to sob and beg for her forgiveness. It was all your fault that she was brought back to prison, made vulnerable to her enemies and you knew it. You had abandoned her when she needed you most, instead choosing to spend your time with Stella, who had supported you and your new business, lavished attention on you, but who ultimately betrayed you.

You'd rolled Alex's fears off your shoulders, seeing them only as an annoyance, simple paranoia, an unlikely fantasy which hadn't ended up being a fantasy at all but a very real and life threatening possibility.

You expect her to yell and rage, to tell you what a worthless piece of shit you are, but she does none of these things. She simply stares at you, watching you as you watch her, studying every single line of your face.

"It's so good to see you," she speaks first, unexpectedly, her voice husky and tender and the emotions behind her words hit you in the chest like a tidal wave. "For a while there, I thought that I'd never see you again."

The armour slips a bit more at her words, allowing tears to well up in your eyes as you finally manage to speak. "I'm so sorry, Al. I'm so fucking sorry."

"Shut up," she laughs, though her words are thick are wet. "I'm not holding grudges today either. I'm just happy to see you."

"You never hold grudges when you probably should," you reply, watching her as she steps into your cube and places herself on the edge of your bed.

"Probably," she agrees, her green eyes roaming over every inch of your face. Your hand reaches out of it's own accord, tracing the scar that runs through her eyebrow, frowning when Alex flinches away from the touch.

"Sorry," you whisper, dropping your hand back into your lap, lifelessly. You have no right to touch her, you know this.

"It's fine," she responds quickly, reaching out and gripping your hand with her own. "It's healed but I can still feel it, it's weird."

You wonder if your relationship with her will ever possibly heal, but you think that things will probably always be weird between the two of you now, too.

/

It takes another month before Alex forgives you enough to kiss you again, taking you in the chapel and in the shower stalls, fungus be damned. She's officially your girlfriend again, though she refuses your offer to re-join the panty business, merely giving you strange looks when you speak to your business partners in hushed whispers.

If she notices the difference in you, she doesn't say anything, though there's a gap between you that was never there before and you're beginning to think that it will never fill, no matter how hard she kisses you and how often she fucks you.

(You pretend not to notice the hurt in her eyes when she runs her fingers over your tattoo or her closed off expression when Stella's name is mentioned.)

She's still the only one to get back beneath your armour, as you grow harder and harder, colder and colder in the prison, it's never directed at her again.

You learn from your mistakes now and you know that losing Alex is something that you'll never be able to deal with.

She becomes the exception to your rule: _Trust No Bitch._

You trust Alex with everything.

/

It doesn't take long before everything starts going to shit.

It starts with one of the workers for Whispers somehow finding your website and it doesn't take long for them to piece things together. It takes even less time for them to figure out your part in the company, especially once they check your credit card transaction history. It's such a shame, because you're meant to be getting out in less than two months.

 _Karma's a bitch,_ a voice whispers in your head, with Stella's distinct Australian accent.

You're carted off to the SHU to await trial for your new charges, though you somehow manage to lie convincingly enough to keep your brother's name out of it. Red somehow manages to weasel out of her charges, as your business partner, undoubtedly with help from Healy, though Flaca was thrown in the SHU with you, but you're unsure of what's she's being charged with.

In the week that you spend in SHU, all you can think about is how grateful you are that Alex chose to stay out of it.

You're shipped off to court in New York, where you watch emotionlessly as Flaca tells the judge and jury that it was all your idea. She tells them everything that they need to hear to convict you and you know that you're done for, more confused than anything when they say that there's one more witness to bring to the stand.

You wonder why they even bother, since Flaca has provided more than enough proof to sentence you for at least another five years. You wonder who it is, if Healy's somehow managed to convince Red to take the stand or if they've pulled Stella out of MAX so that she can take her revenge on you.

It's like a stab in the gut when the door opens to reveal Alex, who climbs the steps to the stand slowly and shakily, without once looking in your direction.

The prosecutor asks Alex question after question and you're surprised when Alex admits her guilt that the idea had been conducted between the two of you and for a moment, you almost wonder if she's taking part of the blame to help shorten your new sentence. Alex had always been protective of you, after all.

Of course, it doesn't last.

Apparently, Alex's near death experience has returned some of that self-serving pragmatism that you so fondly remember. It's like you've gone back in time to when she gave up your name to the feds and threw you under the bus in Chicago, giving you up to save herself. You feel a stab of nostalgia mixed with anger at this side of Alex that has returned, a part of her that you thought was long gone.

It's not long before Alex tells the jury of how quickly she backed out when you decided to take an idea that was meant to be 'a fun way to pass the time in the monotony of prison' to the next level. She tells them _everything_ , much more information than Flaca could have given them, and each word is like a slap in the face.

Her eyes meet yours when she finally finishes and you can see regret there, in her beautiful green eyes, but you don't care. You don't care, you don't care, you don't care. You're so fucking empty of anything when they allow Alex to step down and the judge announces your sentence.

Guilty, of course.

But you don't care.

It's a true show of the prison's stupidity and pure cruelty that they choose to place you all in the same van for the drive back to the prison. They place you in the backseat, with your wrists handcuffed, attached to a pair of manacles that surround your ankles, which is lucky for Flaca, who looks uncharacteristically nervous as they seat her in front of you. You want to wrap your chains around her throat and strangle her to death, but instead you avert your eyes as they place Alex into the seat beside her.

Your ex-partner and your definitely now ex-lover watches at you sadly, twisting around in her seat to stare at you. The guards in the driver and passenger seat ignore you all, turning on the radio, but it's not enough to drown out Alex's voice when she begins to speak to you, her voice low and pleading.

"Piper, please, can you just look at me?"

"It wasn't my choice, okay? They forced me into it."

"They were going to charge me, for starting this whole thing with you."

"They knew I was a part of it, this was the only way to stop them from putting more time on my sentence."

"I've still got six years in here, Piper, because of you."

"I'm sorry, Pipes. I'm so fucking sorry."

It's so hard not to listen, so instead, you focus on running your fingers along the tattoo on your forearm, like a blind woman reading brail.

 _Trust No Bitch._

 _Trust No Bitch._

 _Trust No Bitch._

Especially the one that you love.

 _ **End.**_

 _Second Authors Note: Unfortunately, I begin this note to tell you that I will not be updating my story Feels Like Home, because after watching season three, I have absolutely no wish to continue it, especially knowing now what happens. Season three kind of broke something in me, concerning this show, this season which I have looked forward to for a year and which did not meet my expectations even slightly. While all the actresses were still amazing (though I found Ruby Rose to be lacking, despite the fact that I support her because we have the same accent) the plot lines didn't really do it for me and the complete destruction of Piper's character and the progress that she has made kind of ruined it all for me. I think that there was a lot of possibilities for her character to make more progress, but instead the writers more or less completely switched directions with her and made her into a soulless monster. Hence, my slight bit of revenge for this new Piper that I wrote into this story, which was very cathartic to write. So, I highly doubt that I will be writing any Litchfield based stories in the future, unless they take another drastic turn in season four and fix this shit which has the entire vauseman fandom up in arms. I will be continuing my AU's, though possibly not for a few weeks until I shrug off my OITNB funk._

 _Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this choppily put together story and I welcome reviews and PMs with discussion over the last season. Thanks for reading._


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